


Inevitable

by gigiree



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigiree/pseuds/gigiree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne Acker has always been able to see beyone the veil...the Other...faerie, whatever you wish to call it. But that's precisely the problem. She wishes she couldn't. It's only until she meets the strange Bog King, proprietor of a wish-granting, herb-growing shop on Deseo Street, that she has a hope of becoming normal. The price? Become a part-timer in Bog's shop until she can pay off the debt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing in this world is a coincidence. Everything is Inevitability. -Yuko Ichihara, xxxHOLIC
> 
> If you've already guessed by now, this AU is HEAVILY inspired by the anime xxxHolic. The same premise and all, but the story will deviate.

On most days, it’s bearable. She merely clips in a primrose into her short tufted hair and then goes about her day. She’ll notice them still, from the corner of her eye. Flashes of things both surreal and more earthly than anything humans could dream of. **  
**

She sees them, but they don’t see her.

On most days. that’s the case. And on most days, she’s got her ever present primrose on and she pretends she’s normal.

But today is not most days and All Hallows’ Eve is tonight and Marianne forgot.

The sun is setting, tendrils of purples and oranges reaching for one final crescendo before they give way to autumn’s nightly song. Already the breeze has begun to whisper, sending red and golden leaves dancing across city sidewalks.  

She quickens her pace, her flat-heeled boots crunching leaves faster still, because the wind is slightly muggy and she knows that on it rides an oh so familiar, peculiar and tantalizing smell. It’s a bit too sweet, like over ripened fruit or burnt caramel. It’s tingly and itchy and unpleasant.

It’s the smell of magic.

_‘Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.’_

The mantra is her only saving grace. She lets it take over her words and thoughts until she’s mumbling it into the folds of her purple scarf and tapping it’s tune inside her coat pockets against her thighs.

She pretends not to notice the coalescing shadows that rise and ebb and flow. They’re coming. The veil is thin enough, that she’s sure she can reverse the state of affairs and step into their world if she was really so willing. But she knows the stories, has seen the mischief herself.

Her frantic pace has carried her to a quiet part of town. It’s depressingly void of crowds, no little costumed children and their reluctant guardians in sight. There’s only a few teenagers sitting on the stoop of a ruddy Brownstone house, only one in a row of same-looking, dilapidated buildings with dusty stoops.

She sees them passing around a blunt, smoke curling and inviting. They lounge on the stairs, shoes sliding on dry leaves, looking for all the world like kings of a strange autumn kingdom crowned by a haze of indolence. Adventurous and stupid, knighted by youth and all its follies, they assume they have power enough over even her, a twenty four year old Master’s student.

They laugh and jeer, colorful language and childish catcalls.

“HEY THERE, BABE!”

“Where you goin’ girl?”

And had it been any other day she would’ve climbed right up the stairs and fisted their shirts in her hands, bared her teeth, and ground their smelly smokes underneath her heel. But today she has no primrose and if she looks at them, she risks making eye contact with the tiny brownies getting high from second hand smoke as they sit on the boys’ shoulders.

She settles for giving them the finger and moves on her way, biting back acerbic replies and a strange laughter that wells up at the thought of stupid boys and affronted brownies.

Marianne doesn’t notice the dawning horror on their faces when her trailing shadow shifts and lengthens into something hulking and wraith-like. For a moment, they see it and a cold burning vice-like grip of fear tightens their chest, stops their laughter and leaves them shuddering despite the autumn’s tepid weather.

The brownies are gone by the time she dares a glance back. There’s nothing behind her but a few bewildered boys slowly snuffing out their cigarette, thinking they had just had a bad trip.

She breathes a sigh of relief, the boys and brownies and brownstone now nearly a block away and the growing shadows looking as normal in proportion and shape as she could wish.

Marianne’s relief is short lived, because as she rights herself to keep moving, mantra at the ready, she comes face to face with _something_.

She’s long since stopped trying to name what she sees, to categorize the multitude of varied and sundry forms is pointless and useless. Myths and legends only go so far…barely scratch the surface of what exists.

The ‘ _something’_  is a good foot taller than her, slim and wispy and white. It’s a mass of misty, shifting features and she can just barely make out a gaping mouth and burning eyes. It writhes in place, floating inches from her above the cracked concrete. And Marianne trains her eyes on the amorphous edges of the thing, remembering her golden rule.

_‘Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.’_

She doesn’t bother going around the something. She ignores the heart hammering in her throat and the dizzy, heady remnants of fear clinging to her senses. Valiantly, she continues her brisk pace right through the specter.

When she reaches the corner of the block and decides she’s had enough , she breaks into a run, breathing her mantra and following the scent of primroses that beckons so lovingly.

* * *

It’s dark. It smells of spices and perfumes and primroses.

The store is a hodgepodge collection of strange looking artifacts, anything from silvery delicate instruments to yellowed parchment under tiny bird skulls. Garlands and potted plants hang unsteadily from the ceiling, and for once she’s grateful for her small height when she narrowly avoids hitting her head under all the suspended greenery.

Primroses peek in between the variants of leaves, tucked in and shyly glancing out at the newcomer with a sweet little trepidation. But it’s their presence that gives Marianne assurance.

She’s safe in here. All Hallows’ Eve has no reach within this dingy little store on the corner of the Deseo Street.

She bows her head and breathes a much needed sigh of relief. She’s bent over, chest heaving from the full-on sprint she had run just to reach the source of the primrose scent. She can barely hear anything over the sound of her panting. She has vague flash of embarrassment because she’s just barged into a stranger’s store without a word and is now gulping air like a fish.

_“Fairies took yer breath or what?”_

Her head snaps up so fast, she’s sure she’s torn a muscle somewhere in her neck. Marianne gazes at the source of the question, wide eyed and fearful because there is no  _freakin’_ way he should have known.

And she’s met with perhaps the strangest sight of all.

The shop’s keeper is a man of very tall, gangly stature, chiseled angles and scruffy looks. Perhaps the strangest thing is the startling shade of blue in his eyes. It seems to positively glow underneath the dingy lighting. Other than that, he blends in so well, that she has to take a moment to squint and make out his mud-covered apron from the olive green of the peeling wall paper behind him.

He’s strange in his regularity, a layer of everyday dirt and grime stick to his front and the lines on his brow suggest he’s simply another harrowed human ensconced in a grim and somewhat creepy little store.

He’s normal. Not classically handsome by any means, but his homeliness seems to be a minor sort of comfort for her. He’s human and strange and scruffy and therefore someone she can rely on. 

She’s long learned that good looks and shiny smiles are not something sure and steady.

But the stranger is impatient and there’s a scintilla of mischief in the way he cocks his head and lifts the corner of his mouth in a vicious sneer.

“Well?” He asks her, his slight brogue lilting the syllable a bit.

“I…I..”

Marianne can barely speak.  And she’s in such a ridiculous position, knees half bent and hands on legs and sweat trickling at the back of her neck. The relief of being safe from “the other” is hardly enough to mask her shame or her slight horror of being asked such an oddly specific question.

“Y-yeah…yeah, you can say that.” She finally responds, and straightens herself out.

He hums a quick acknowledgement, gives her a once over and seems to be satisfied with what he finds, because he hasn’t kicked her out of the store yet and the amused sneer has softened just the teeniest bit.

 _“So then, are ye ready?”_  He says a little too lightly, his smirk more prominent, and the dim lighting makes the gleam in his pretty blue eyes kind of sinister. He steeples his hands, and hunches his shoulders, settling his elbows on the glass counter that holds numerous odd little trinkets.

But she can hardly focus on tiny details when there’s an air of foreboding and she’s starting to wonder if it would have been better to face the specter than stay in here with a strange man and the smell of primroses.

“Ready for what?!” She bites out, her nerves stretched taut until they’re humming warnings and doubts into her heart. She’s ready all right. Ready to defend herself should the need arise, with her balled up little fists and the self-defense class she took as an undergrad about three years ago.

And his sneer devolves into a pleased smirk and then he says-

“Why, ready to make yer wish stupid girl.”

“Wha-”

“To make yer wish. To make it so tha’ you can’t see ‘em anymore,  _Marianne_.”

She doesn’t know what has struck more terror into her once again frantically-beating heart. It might be that he knew of her “gift”. It might be that he knew her name. It might simply be that his smirk has widened until it reached his pretty blue eyes and that the lighting has somehow grown darker and the shadows had lengthened.

At this point, he is no longer mundane. He is O _ther_  and she has reached it.

And despite her ready fists and her spine standing ramrod straight to be her full height, she’s tremulous. Shivers run havoc up and down her back, tiny hairs in the back of her neck rising, even though her scarf is still wound around her shoulders.

Her lips gawp, flapping open and closed until she manages to ask-

“How do you know that? How do you-”

_“Do you wish it or not?”_

His second interruption is less welcoming than the first, but it strikes a chord in her, because now the shadows have settled and he has outstretched his knobby fingers towards her, palm up and inviting.

And she remembers so many things. She remembers an accident and a silly imp jumping to and fro between the wrecked little Volkswagen Bug and the paramedics kneeling over her dying mother.

She remembers being strapped down to a gurney, a stifling neck brace, and countless arms pushing her down and rolling her away until she can do nothing but scream.

She remembers her tiny sister being pushed into the dirt by bullies who thought Marianne was weird and eerie and who couldn’t get to her in any other way than by hurting the person she loved the most.

She remembers therapy sessions where she had to say she was fine, that she no longer saw things, even when there was a pixie happily singing in the psychiatrist’s potted plant behind her.

She remembers friendships gone and a fiance who had moved out because things kept breaking and getting lost and she couldn’t explain to him that it was the house brownies that had never taken a shine to him.

She remembers and she wishes and she stops herself from breathing a tiny _yes._

Marianne is weary, because she knows what it means to make deals with someone related to “the other”. He’s already got her name. There’s power in that. He knows her wish. There’s even more power in  _that_.

She puts on her best bravado, a steady mask with a quirked almost-smile and eyes that shine with challenging courage. She’s scared, oh is she scared. But there’s hope and an almost destructive tendency to jump in head first into the unknown because she’s lived her whole life knowing, and there’s comfort sometimes in not.

“I don’t make deals with strangers.”

He is surprised. It’s clear in the way he steps back a bit behind the counter and in the way his bushy brows rise high over clouded blue eyes. His hand is no longer stretched out. He’s brought it back towards him, lacing it with the other and tapping his fingers a bit nervously.

Finally, he clears his throat and speaks in a  slightly grudging and mostly bemused tone.

“My name is Bog King.”

He extends his hand again, and this time Marianne steps forward and grasps his hand over the smudged counter, thin nails pressing crescents into his calloused skin. In part, it’s revenge for scaring her and for another, it’s to show that she’s not afraid. That she can take what he’s promised and that she’s ready to face consequences. But his hand is warm and hers is still cold and clammy from her sojourn outside in the cold autumn air.

“Bog King?” She queries somewhat densely.

“That’s my name. It can’t be yers too.”

“So you do have a sense of humor.” She muses, and quickly breaks the handshake.

Bog King clears his throat and a bit awkwardly, lifts a latch to the left and rounds the counter to stand before his newest client.

“Payment must be equal in value to services rendered.” He informs softly and cringes slightly when she cups her hands defensively over her throat.

“What?! My life or my immortal soul?”

She means it to come out as a joke, but for all her bravery, the tone is too flat and it is laced with actual, terrible fear. She buries her chin into the folds of her scarf, sniffing slightly because the smell of primroses and spices is too strong and it’s giving her a headache.

Bog gives a long suffering sigh before answering.

“I have…no use for those things. Too great a payment for the wish I’m granting.”

“Oh…then what do you want?”

He glances quickly up at an old cuckoo clock on a shelf behind her. It’s dusty with chipped red paint and only one arm intact. His face brightens at the sight, and hums thoughtfully, another bemused grin tugging at the corners of his thin lips.

“Time. I want your time, Marianne.”

Her eyes widen and she’s just about to protest quite loudly when he holds up his hands, trying to appease her.

“I dinnae mean yer lifeline stupid girl. I meant yer service. Ye’ll work in my shop, until you have paid the price. Then I’ll grant yer wish.”

Marianne’s shock is only paralleled by her indignation. She did not graduate with a double Bachelor’s in History and English Literature, and was not currently working on a Masters degree, just to be relegated to some stingy, creepy strange man’s part-time employee.

“I’m a student!”

But Bog shakes his head.

“I dinnae keep regular hours. You’ll work when I need ye to, and no more than tha’.”

Marianne is pacing by now, her short hair just barely brushes the hanging tendrils and ferns and her boots click a quick staccato beat that echoes her nervous heartbeats and fluttering hands. And she’s even devolved into a running rant, words slipping out like water.

“I can’t work too much. I mean I’ve still got my dissertation coming up soon, and OH CRAP! I have so many loans already, I can’t spend another year working on it. There’s the commute to worry about and I don’t even know if I’m qualified to do whatever it is you’re hiring me for. AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS SHOP IS SELLING, MUCH LESS-”

“WOAH…Woah! Calm down. Yer going ta bust a vessel in tha’ state.” Bog chides, and is surprisingly gentle when he grasps her shoulders and stops her pacing so that she stands right in front of him.

She’s forced to bend her neck pretty far back just to look him in the eyes. He towers over her, but for all his initial mystery and cynicism, he is far too awkward and his form is far too hunched over in trepidation for her to be really scared.

What’s starting to look scary is her schedule.

When he notices that she’s finally calmed down enough to start paying attention, he explains.

“This is a wish-granting shop. Ye walked here on yer own, I highly doubt the commute is so difficult that you couldn’t simply walk. If ye can breathe and talk to people, yer qualified. And yer time here will not interfere with yer studies, I promise ya that.”

He’s numbered off the counterparts to her litany, several fingers already marking reasons as to why she should accept.

“Oh.”

“Are ye satisfied?”

“Wish-granting?” She squeaks, incredulity twists her face into the strangest expression, a small pout and only one eyebrow rising. She can believe anything at this point because she knows and she’s seen.

“Yes. Wish-granting. Now do ye want the job or not?”

And she has no choice. The deal is already done in her mind. But much to her amazement, the fear has abated and she trusts his promise of time being manageable and she trusts him for some insane, illogical reason that still eludes her. She’s tired too, and she still has a long way back to her tiny apartment with the nice collection of tea.

Weariness seeps into her bones, and the experience has not been altogether unpleasant. Bog King is a strange man, but somehow she know that he is also an honest one. She wrings her hands and nods resolutely.

“Okay. I’ll take it. But just a few more questions.”

“Of course,  _part-timer_.”

She winces at the title, and she feels sixteen years old again with acne and braces and as if a  job bagging groceries at the supermarket is as far as she’ll ever go in life. But Bog is waiting, and she has to know.

“Number one, how did you know I could see stuff?”

Bog strokes the scraggly scruff on his chin, a fake thoughtfulness making his eyes bright with amusement.

“The primroses. Ye followed their smell, knowing they could keep ye safe. Plus, ye absolutely reek of residual magic.”

“But I-”

“Magic is magic. Doesn’t mean ye cast it, jes means yer tied to it.”

“Okaaay… _Number two_ ,” Marianne holds up two fingers to emphasize, and she looks highly disconcerted by this one.

“How did you know my name?”

She can swear that he’s laughing at her. His mouth isn’t open and he isn’t making a sound, but the corners of his eyes are crinkled and the blue is really light now despite the shadows and he looks really nice like that. Nicer than she had first thought possible.

Her cheeks burn in shame and she’s indignant, because no matter how nice he may look smiling like that, there is no reason why she should be the source of humor in this scenario.

She stands on her tiptoes and jabs a finger at his chest, right above a particularly large splotch of mud on his apron.

“How?” She reiterates from behind gritted teeth.

And his laughter is threatening to burst out and he points at the lapel of her gray peacoat.

“It’s on yer student ID, Ms. Marianne Acker.”

Her mortification complete, Marianne reaches for a primrose plotted next to a potted fern hanging overhead and tucks it behind her ear.

Without another word, she turns on her heel and goes for the door. Ire winds through her, she’s irritated because painful memories have been dredged up and her new boss is annoyingly smug, and she had forgotten about her student ID on her coat.

Before the door slams behind her and the tiny bell has finished announcing her departure, she hears Bog call out-

“Ye start on Monday after yer class, 6:00 PM!”

She’s too annoyed to ask how he knows that.

His words fade away as she steps once more into the empty streets of this business area. There are a few cars rounding the corner of Deseo St., heading home from work, but it’s relatively quiet and she can easily ignore the odd shadows and coalescing figures because they can’t see her now with a primrose tucked behind her ear.

So she trudges home, the sting of her humiliation slightly relieved by a future in which she will not have to chant ‘ _don’t look, don’t look’_  and by the the fact that her life has reached a new bend in the road.

And if she’s being honest with herself, she’s kind of excited to see where this bend in the road and Mr. Bog King will lead.


End file.
